The Power of Purity

He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. -- 1 Corinthians 1:30

This has been a lost week.  I’m not sure what kind of dysfunctional disorder I have, but not being in my usual space disrupts all my other routines.  My wife normally complains that she doesn’t see me all day holed up in my office.  This week she is complaining that I’m messing up her kitchen.  Somebody else does not like their routine disrupted. 

I have been doing some reading in old books, and there is a lot of talk about purity.  Purity does not seem to be a popular topic these days.  Perhaps some are put off by the connotation of being a Puritan. Puritan is virtually equivalent to Pharisee, having a reputation of being staid, boring, strait-laced, judgmental, and hypocritical.  No one, after all can be pure. 

It’s true that when I hear the words of those from two or three centuries past talking about being set apart from worldly thinking, influences, and imaginings, I wonder if it wasn’t easier in an age without moving images of pretty girls selling hamburgers through sexual suggestion.  Hardee’s does make a decent burger anymore, but I usually refuse to eat there for fear I will have to surrender my sandwich to a starving supermodel.  It’s probably best to stick with the drive-thru. 

Nevertheless, the Bible calls us to be pure as Jesus Himself is pure and holy as our Father in heaven is holy.  If we are so commanded, we know that the Lord has made provision to enable us to obey.  That which is impossible for man is possible with God.  What does Jesus tell those who come to Him for healing and deliverance?  Be it unto you according to your faith.  All things are possible if you can believe. 

I am less impressed by those who can believe for a Lear Jet or believe they can swing a million dollar home mortgage than I am by the man who believes he can be faithful to his wife and a responsible father to his children.  I believe that a pure life is a powerful life, that a holy and righteous life is a courageous and heroic life.  I believe that I can live such a life through Christ -- who  has been made my wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.  The only question is whether or not I want to live it.  Does it make any difference?

This is something Julie commented on the other day.  When we were unenlightened, most of us figured that what we think and what we do that “doesn’t hurt anybody else” does not matter.  It turns out that it really only matters if we would rather not live in hell.  To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled (Titus 1:15).  The purer we are, the purer the world we inhabit.  It’s funny how that works. 

God is particularly gracious to me in this regard.  When I indulge my old nature, the harvest comes in quickly – the same day sometimes, sometimes within the hour.  Do you remember the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons where Foghorn is constantly tormenting the hound?  Sometimes there is a white line or a sign where the hound’s rope runs out.  He pursues the rooster until suddenly he hits the end of his slack and is stopped violently and abruptly.  That’s me.  I know how he feels. 

As we say so often, not all the ugly and unfortunate things that happen in our lives are the result of our own sins.  Holy people struggle, lose, and suffer just the same as the unrighteous and the defiled.  Jesus said, To the one who has, more will be given.  When the pure suffer, they see it as being from God for the purpose of further purification.  As a somewhat enlightened head once said, the pure will love it the way it is, and the world will be full of light.  Walking in holiness will enrich us with greater holiness.  Walking in the grace of God we have been given will lead us to receive more grace.

For some of those who reject the call of God to live in Christ and have the righteousness of Christ credited to them, getting jerked up short may cause them to start thinking differently.  For others, it only makes them more certain of the world’s unfairness and meaninglessness.  They may become perpetual victims demanding more and more from those around them to assuage their emptiness and longing.  They may give up and seek some form of anesthetization.  They may go feral and prey upon all who come within their reach, glorying in their ability to destroy and feeding on the misery they cause in others.

There are many frustrated Christians who have not been taught or have been unable to comprehend the truth about holiness.  They cannot understand why their lives are so filled with pain and chaos, as if their confession of Christ and their efforts to follow Him are all for naught.  Perhaps they lack discipline because, though they have accepted the message of the gospel, they have not become disciples, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth.  I can’t do it on my own, and I can’t be much help to anybody else.  But the Holy Ghost can.  In fact, it’s in His job description.

Sanctification is what we need, and, as impossible as it is for the natural man, this deliverance and freedom is available to us in Christ Jesus – if we believe it is ours, if we accept that it does matter and it does make a difference.  We can be pure as He is pure because He is our purity.      

The Man

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings  

and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas. – Psalm 8:3-8

The writer of Hebrews quotes from these verses in Psalm 8 then considers:

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.  But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:8-9)

All of creation is destined to be ruled by man, the being made in the image and likeness of God, but our experience is that we do not yet see everything under our control.  As I look around, I think the human race is going out of its way to prove that we are not up to the job. 

Our present world system is not the first to fail in this.  The spiraling tale of history is longer than we can perceive in either direction.  There will be a winnowing, a planting and another season to come.  I see very few to whom I would trust power of any sort.  We are all still too easily corrupted. 

I know some people who cast their own lead bullets.  Pure lead melts at 621 degrees Fahrenheit.  I have heard it claimed – I personally doubt it, and I’m not about to test it – that a person can stick his finger in a pot of molten lead without being burned, so long as the finger is perfectly clean.  If the slightest bit of dirt is on the skin, however, it will burn to the bone.   

Power is a lot like that.  It will latch onto any flaw in a person’s character and eat its way into the heart.  The Incarnation shows us the potential in man.  It also shows us the path we have to walk to exercise that potential, a razor’s edge of perfect obedience, the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. 

Jesus is Lord.  He is the Last Adam, the Second Man, the federal head of a new race spreading slowly out from the Place of the Skull to the stars.  He has made that impossible transit of faith, walking the razor's edge as He walked on the water.  He has passed through the fire and not been burned.  When we put on Christ, we may follow where He has gone before.  In Him we have died, and in Him we are raised.  With Christ we were buried, and with Christ we will reign. 

Better Resolution

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. – Psalm 1:1-2

My late brother-in-law was a troubled soul who could find very little peace.  Wherever he went, though, he seemed to draw forth sympathy.  He was, if anything, too open and generous.  To a waitress for whom he would leave a tip of twenty or even fifty dollars after a ten-dollar meal, he could come off as creepy, but he meant no real harm.  His main problem was that his mind ran too fast, and any idea seemed like a good idea.  We would take him to church with us on occasion, and the best advice I ever heard him given came from Herb, a deacon rare in the depth of his kindness and breadth of wisdom, who told him to memorize Psalm 1.  “That,” Herb drawled, “is a powerful Scripture.  It’s a powerful Scripture.”

As I may have mentioned before, my tendency to tell stories is honestly derived from my father who was a great storyteller.  He even told them to himself.  I have seen him many times at a distance, carrying a bale of hay to the horses or a bucket of feed to the dogs, talking all the while with not even one of those creatures close enough to hear what was said.  The truth is that I do the same thing myself, and, like Dad, I’m usually not talking out when my lips are moving.  I’m mumbling “under my breath” whatever scenario I am going over.  We would say that we are chewing on it.  I suspect we are not entirely alone in this practice, as “self-talk” is known even among non-hillbillies.   

I can’t help myself.  I don’t even realize I’m doing it most of the time.  Since I am going to do it anyway, I might as well talk about something worthwhile rather than what I’d like to tell the President, the Supreme Court, and a joint session of Congress.  Far better to ponder God’s Word by talking it to myself, for that is what the psalmist meant when he told us to meditate upon the law.  We ought to whisper Scripture to ourselves -- chew it like a cow with a cud, gum it, engage it. 

There is a beautiful phrase in Ephesians 5:26 describing how men ought to love their wives as Christ loves His Bride and gave Himself up for her …  that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. 

When we meditate upon Scripture, we are washing our thoughts in light, disinfecting our tainted minds.  That which cannot survive exposure to the blaze of truth will shrivel away.  Worldly thinking is very much a kind of brainwashing, immersion in a solution of fear, need, anxiety, and arrogance.  It leaves our minds weighed down, clogged and gunky.  After a day in the grime and grit, we often come out of the shower feeling like new persons.  That same ease and relief on a spiritual level awaits the one who will meditate upon and wash his or her mind in the cleansing, sanctifying word of the Living God.  Clearing the detritus of the world from the eyes of our heart will enable us to see with far better resolution. 

 

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear (but it scares you to death in the process)

Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that grants a boon unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of him who prays. Love is one, and love is changeless.

For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more. It strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected – not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing toward the culmination when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.

Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed.

And our God is a consuming fire.

If this is hard to understand, it is as the simple, absolute truth is hard to understand. It may be centuries of ages before a man comes to see a truth – ages of strife, of effort, of aspiration. But when once he does see it, it is so plain that he wonders how he could have lived without seeing it. That he did not understand it sooner was simply and only that he did not see it. To see a truth, to know what it is, to understand it, and to love it, are all one. – George MacDonald, excerpt from sermon, “The Consuming Fire”

I’m a little short on time for the next few days, so, like yesterday, I may not be blogging much.

A short description of MacDonald might be to say he was a person who had rejected Calvinistic determinism but clung to the beautiful truth of God’s sovereignty. Here he is depicting the Lord as that perfect Bridegroom, likewise described in Ephesians 5:27, as presenting his Bride “to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and blameless.”

God will never give up on us, but that also means He will never really let up on us. In the end we will get right. Can something be absolutely terrifying and joyously hopeful at the same time?

Well, there was this Cross …

What Is To Be Feared

Brothers, I tell you this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption – 1 Corinthians 15:50

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us hold on to grace. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. – Hebrews 12:28,29

Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure. – 1 John 3:2,3

It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God -- Hebrews 10:31

When we say God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear – a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them.

The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with ten-fold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first they are fully themselves. The avaricious, weary, selfish suspicious old man shall have passed away. The young, every young self, will remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which they thought themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.

It is the law of Nature – that is, the law of God – that all that is destructible shall be destroyed. When that which is immortal buries itself in the destructible – when it receives all the messages from without, through the surrounding decadence, and none from within, from the eternal doors – it cannot, though immortal still, know its own immortality. The destructible must be burned out of it, or begin to be burned out of it, before it can partake of eternal life. When that is all burnt away and gone, then it has eternal life. Or rather, when the fire of eternal life has possessed a man, then the destructible is gone utterly, and he is pure.

Many a man’s work must be burned, that by that very burning he may be saved – “so as by fire.” Away in smoke go the lordships, the Rabbi-hoods of the world, and the man who acquiesces in the burning is saved by the fire; for it has destroyed the destructible, which is the vantage point of the deathly, which would destroy both body and soul in hell. If he still clings to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaved him – possibly by looking like the truth.

The man who loves God, and is not yet pure, courts the burning of God. Nor is it always torture. The fire shows itself sometimes only as light – still it will be fire of purifying. The consuming fire is just the original, active form of Purity, that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God. Without purity there can be as no creation so no persistence. That which is not pure is corruptible, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption.

The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less because he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. He shall not come out until he has paid the last penny. – George MacDonald : Sermon, “What Is To Be Feared?”

Refinement

Sin was sort of the topic on One Cosmos yesterday and it got me thinking. Heinlein’s character Lazarus Long says, “Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other ‘sins’ are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid).” It is very much a libertarian sentiment, and one I understand. But it’s wrong. It is not just the “unwise” that is prohibited.

The Judeo-Christian definition of sin always involves God. If you are a materialist, atheist or agnostic, nothing I say from this point forward is going to make much sense to you. You can feel free to stick with Heinlein’s definition.

We all know the story of David and Bathsheba. They have made movies about it. Preachers love to expound on it in sermons. David committed adultery with the wife of one of his warriors then tried to cover it up when the woman told him she was with child. David brought her husband, Uriah, in from the battlefield and tried to get him to go to his wife. Uriah, a man of honor and valor, refused to sleep in his own bed because his fellow warriors remained in the field.

In desperation, David sent a note to his warlord, Joab, to put Uriah in the thickest of the battle, then fall back so Uriah would be killed. The wronged man was so trustworthy that David sent the sealed message back in Uriah’s possession. Joab did as he was ordered. Uriah died and David married the widow.

Nathan was a seer, a prophet for the royal court, but he knew nothing of David’s evil deeds. The Lord came by His Spirit and revealed the truth to the prophet who went to David and told him an allegorical story. When David reacted in anger at the evil done by a rich man against a poor man, Nathan boldly pointed his finger at the king and said, “You are the man!”

To David’s credit he repented of his wrong. The child Bathsheba carried died and David would suffer other grief in his life because of this horrible wrong-doing.

Let’s see who was adversely impacted by David’s evil behavior: certainly Uriah, Bathsheba – even though she seemed a relatively willing participant, the child who died, Joab who was made an accomplice to murder, and in many ways he betrayed the trust of his warriors and his subjects. You might expect a long apology to all involved from the king. Yet, when you read David’s confession known as Psalm 51, you find something interesting. He mentions none of the people he wronged. Instead, speaking to the Lord, David says, “Against You – You alone – I have sinned and done this evil in Your sight.”

If you want a simple, foolproof definition of sin, I have it for you: sin is the stuff God would not do.

To the extent that I am a child of God, that I share His nature and have His light in my life, I won’t do it either. On those occasions when I do something God would not do, I deny my identity and my paternity. My sin proclaims within the spiritual realm that God is not my Father. It doesn’t matter if it is adultery and murder or just ogling chicks and cussing my neighbor under my breath. In the Real world of the Spirit, it is a out and out denial of who I am.

Look at the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. God illuminates the world through believers. Acting contrary to God’s nature is like hiding the light under a basket – it isn’t worth much to anybody. He goes on to tell us how overt sins are bad but that they begin in the heart. Jesus Himself was pure and sinless. He had no problem with being the Light of the World. When people saw Jesus, they saw God. In a very real way, when Jesus saw people, no matter how far down they were, He saw God in them as well. The Father wants to see Himself in us, clear and perfect.

He tells us to be like our Father in all things. “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous ... Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

How can the Bible tell us to be perfect like our Father in heaven? Who can be perfect? For one thing the word often translated as perfect has the meaning of mature. Be grown up even as your Father is grown up. Be fully your destiny and purpose just as the Father is His Destiny. Or just Be as your Father Is.

Beyond that we are perfect in Christ. Once the work of the Cross was completed and Jesus said, “It is finished”, it was finished. For all time, all souls can be fully sons of God if they are willing.

But sin says, “Not really.” Sin warps the mirror of my soul so that the image of God within is distorted. Thus David was right. He hurt a lot of people but his sin was denying and distorting the reflection of God in himself.

“As long as I am not hurting anybody else,” does not cut it. That view says the spiritual is fiction. In the only life that is real, we need purity and God loves us too much not to keep the fire hot until the dross is all gone.